


Jason Meets Lucie

by Argyll137xz



Category: Hellequin Chronicles
Genre: Avalon - Freeform, Enchanter, Gen, Hellequin, Runes, Shield of Avalon (SOA)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-16
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 08:07:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8048770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyll137xz/pseuds/Argyll137xz
Summary: Lucie Moser, Deputy Director of SOA calls at Jason Southern's home to learn a bit more about him.





	Jason Meets Lucie

I’d just settled in for the evening with a good book when some-one knocked on my front door. Since I very rarely have visitors I was mildly annoyed. Probably some-one trying to sell something. Grumbling to myself I walked over to the door. When I opened it I was amazed to see Lucie Moser standing there. “Hello,” I greeted her, “this is a surprise!”

Lucie is the Deputy Director of SOA, the Shield of Avalon, their intelligence service, a bit like MI5 and MI6. She was dressed in a smart trouser suit and carrying a large shoulder bag. I wondered why she wanted to see me, and she must have noticed the look on my face. “No, nothing like that!” she laughed and I relaxed the little bit of tension that had formed in my shoulders. “I like to know the people who are working for me.” she said. “So I’ve popped around for a chat. And I’ve brought a little lubrication!” So saying she opened her shoulder bag and brought out a bottle of golden nectar: 14 year old Oban single malt. “Take seat,” I said, “I’ll get the glasses!”

When I returned from the kitchen with the glasses the bottle was on the coffee table and Lucie was admiring a couple of drawings on the wall. “I like the dragon.” she said. “I wonder what the artist would say if he knew they actually existed at one time?” I put down the glasses.

“He’d say that when he drew it he didn’t know, but when he later found that out, and about other species as well, he was surprised at first, but found it somehow normal.”

“It was you!” she exclaimed.

“It was.” I said modestly. “I dabble occasionally, but I haven’t had much time lately.”

“I know that feeling!” she said as she settled into an armchair, making herself comfortable as I poured the drinks. “Do you like it here?” she asked, making conversation.

I sat down and handed her a glass. “I love it. I always wanted to live here, even though I was born and raised elsewhere and spent most of my life there. I visited once and fell in love with the place. I promised myself that if I ever got the chance I would move here, and here I am. This is my home.”

She took her first sip of whisky, making appreciative noises. “What are your neighbours like? Do they have any idea of what you do?”

I laughed. “The neighbours are fine, though I very rarely see them. As for what I do, they think I’m some sort of rep for a multinational company since I’m away from here so often. I’m not going to spoil their illusion of me!”

“And your house, is it..?

I knew what she meant. “Yes, everything is protected with runes for when I’m not here. One of your colleagues suggested that, and I’m glad they did.”

“Why is that?”

“I’d been here a couple of years when a couple of local oiks thought they’d help themselves to some of my stuff when I wasn’t in. They only got as far as starting to open a rear window. The reaction broke the wrist of one and made a bit of a mess of the others face. I’ve had no trouble since, and, funnily enough, none of the neighbours have either.”

She gave a knowing look. “That’s what tends to happen!”

We both sipped our drinks then I asked “So, why are you really here, Lucie?”

“I like that, straight to the point!” I nodded. “You’re a bit of an enigma, Jason. By all accounts you’re not a team player, preferring to keep yourself to yourself.” She took another sip of her whisky and peered at me over the glass. “I’d say you have trust issues.”

Somehow I kept the shock of her perceptive comment from my face. “I don’t like working with other people.” I said. “When I’m on my own if something goes wrong it’s only my fault, nobody else to throw accusations around, wasting time.”

I thought she was satisfied with my answer, but I was wrong. “We both know that’s not the truth. What happened, Jase?”

I should have been annoyed at her use of my short name, but other thoughts forced it from my mind. She must have sensed my turmoil. “I’m the Deputy Director of SOA and you don’t get there by being an idiot and not knowing things. And no, I’m not using my runes!”

I could see that, all her rune tattoos on  her arms were covered with bandages, as I knew the runes on the rest of her body were too. She kept them like that until she needed to use them otherwise their continual activation took a strain on her energy.

“Jason,” she continued, “if I didn’t need to know I wouldn’t ask, but in my position I have to be sure of the people I work with. You…, well you’re something very special, even if you don’t believe it. You’re an enchanter in a million, unique as far as Avalon is concerned.”

Despite myself I found myself becoming interested. “In what way?”

She smiled. “All other enchanters have to draw, or etch the rune to do a specific effect. You know that I’m covered in tattoos of runes that I can use when needed, but you… you don’t have any tattoos, nor do you need to draw a rune. You think of it and it’s there, for as long as it’s needed and no longer. And not just basic runes, but some that we’ve never seen before, which are possibly dwarven, and you use colour, which only a handful of enchanters have mastered, but right now that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you are unique, and therefore dangerous."

“How do you figure that out?” I asked, shocked by what she was saying.

She smiled. “Because you don’t need to create a physical rune you can do things no other enchanter can do. Think on it. You could walk into a room of people, absolutely naked, and without touching anyone, or drawing a rune, kill one, or all of them, using a rune you created in your mind. That power scares Avalon. What is to stop you wanting to to take over, wanting more power, for yourself, maybe going rogue?”

I was aghast at what she was suggesting. “For fuck’s sake, Lucie!” I began, “You know I could never do anything like that! It’s monstrous you should even think it! All I want to do is help people and live a quite life. Avalon helps me do that, using my ability. There’s no way I’d jeopardise that!”

“I know that.” she said quietly, “but, as I said, I have to know the whys and the wherefores, just to be sure. So, tell me, what happened?”

I took a deep breath and finished my whisky. Should I tell her? She, and others had helped me develop my abilities. Maybe I owed them an explanation. Well, to Lucie at least. I took another deep breath. “Okay.” I said. “But this is just for you, no others need know.”

She didn’t have to think on it. “Deal!” she said, settling back into her chair. I poured myself another good dram; she refused a refill, then I started.

“I’d known Karen most of my life. We’d always been close but, as she was married to a friend of mine, we did nothing about it. I moved away and we lost touch. Then, six years ago, I moved back to the town and we bumped into each other. She was on her own, her husband having died quite a few years earlier and her family had moved away. We got talking, and things snowballed from there.”

I took a long drink of my whisky. “She was special to me. She had health issues that made her life difficult, but they didn’t matter to me, all I saw was this wonderful woman. I loved her like I loved no other, and did everything I could to help her. We were very happy together, talking of getting married and buying a house together.” I paused, remembering.

“What happened?” she asked gently.

I hoped the tears I could feel in my eyes weren’t showing. “She changed.” I said simply. “She started to get better, and as she did so she became more closed in, more selfish. As the days passed the selfishness grew. I could do nothing for her, and she stopped talking. Eventually she accused me of wanting her to become something she wasn’t. Which wasn’t true, not by a long, long way, but I knew it would be no use trying to explain. Anyway, I said ‘Whatever, you seem to know it all.’ and walked out. I haven’t spoken, or had any contact with her since.” The tears were now openly on my cheeks. Lucie said nothing, waiting for me to continue. “I loved her, she said she loved me yet she broke my heart as if it didn’t matter. And with that went my trust in people. Everybody, Lucie, not just her. If someone you love can do that to you what can a friend, or a stranger, do? I have no intention of finding out, so I it’s easier not to trust anyone.” I stopped to wipe the tears away with the back of my hand.

Lucie waited a few moments before speaking. “I understand.” she said softly. I though I’d caught a hint of sadness there, but I couldn’t be sure, the state I was in. “It explains so much about you. And something else as well.”

I finished my whisky before asking. “Explains what?”

“Why you were a late developer.” she replied.

Now I was confused. “What do you mean, a late developer?”

My confusion made her smile. “Jase, most people, be they weres, sorcerers, enchanters or whatever, start to show their abilities in early childhood or when they reach puberty, if at all. But you didn’t.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“I think the emotional trauma of what happened to you triggered your ability. And if that is the case, as I think it is, then we have to keep it secret.”

I’d been a member of Avalon long enough to understand the ramifications of what she had just said and didn’t need it spelling out. Certain sections of Avalon have a long history of deciding what was best for Avalon, or themselves, no matter what the cost was to humans or other species. The harbinger program was just one such scheme, and I knew that Nathan Garret, Hellequin, had stopped such a scheme involving Mordred and a Dr Welkin. I shuddered.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone.” she assured me.

“Thank you for that!” I said with feeling.

She poured another measure of whisky into my glass. “There’s one more thing I need to know.”

“And what’s that?”

“Why did you join Avalon?”

I took a long drink before answering. “Because it seemed the best thing to do!” I replied.

She looked at me. “You don’t fool me for a moment!” she said. “Not many people like you join Avalon willingly.”

“What else could I do?” I countered. “To put it bluntly, at the time I was a mess! After what had happened I moved to here and through myself into work, and what spare time I had was spent reading. That was when I found an old book on runes. I’d always been interested in them. But I didn’t believe they were anything more than an ancient alphabet, albeit with magical overtones. Anyway, I started to study them in a bit more depth, wondering if they would ever be of use or just be an intellectual exercise. Then I started to notice that when I designed and drew bind-runes sometimes odd things would happen.”

She was genuinely interested. Well, as an enchanter of considerable power herself she was bound to be. “Such as?”

I though of some of the things I’d done. “Well, nothing spectacular, as we can both do now, but really simply ones, like a basic protection rune or a rune to bring hope. I taught myself what individual, and combinations, of colours did, and how to give them a time limit, and how to activate them on a very basic level. And that’s as far as it went, or I had any intention of taking it.”

“But you didn’t realise you were an enchanter, and a rare one at that?”

I laughed. “I'd never heard of one so it had never crossed my mind. I didn’t know anything about such things until I met Nate.”

She took another sip of her whisky. “Ah, I know something about that but not the details. What happened?”

I took another drink. The alcohol was having an effect, and it was good talking like this; it had been so long… “I was in my local pub, waiting at the bar to get served. I’d seen this guy sat at a table with a drink, reading some papers, but didn’t take any notice of him. Suddenly, these two characters standing near me started shouting and shoving, then a fist was thrown. It looked like I was going to be in a fights’ firing line, with nowhere to go, so I wished I had a protection rune, more as wishful thinking than expecting it to work, as I prepared to duck, or get hit, closing my eyes, but nothing happened. I opened them to see what was going on and they were stood there, motionless, in mid-punch. It seemed like ages, but it must been less than a second before they spun round and moved away as if given a hefty shove. I didn’t think anyone had noticed but Nate did. The barman sorted them out then served me. After I had got my drink Nate invited me over to his table and we had a chat. He told me who he was, and that he’d seen a rune flare on the back of my hand. At first I didn’t believe him but it made sense. To say he was surprised when I told him I’d never heard of Avalon, or sorcerers, weres and other species and that I’d only just recently started working with runes, is putting it mildly. Anyway, he pointed me in Avalon’s direction, and the rest you know.”

“And we’re glad he did.” she said. “I have, er, some history with Nate, so while we’ll never be friends I trust him, so when I got word from him about you I took a chance. It’s a decision I have never regretted.”

I saluted her with my glass. “Thank you.” I said. “That means a lot.”

She smiled. “Right, I have things to do. A deputy directors work is never done!” She drained her glass, placing it on the table. As she stood to leave she said, “You’ve not had your naming ceremony, have you?”

I admitted that I hadn’t. “We’ll have to arrange one, but that’s for the future.”

I stood and went over to the door, opening it for her. As she left she turned to me. “She still loves you, you know.”

I felt my insides turn into a gloopy porridge. “That’s her loss.” I said, fighting to keep the emotion from my voice. “As far as I’m concerned she’s dead to me.”

Lucie looked at me for a moment and I thought she was going to say something else about her. If she had I don’t know what I would have done, probably slammed the door in her face, but instead she just looked at me for a moment. “You know yourself best.” she said. “Goodnight, Jason, I enjoyed the chat and drinks.”

“Likewise.” I said.

She turned and headed down the path to the street and I watched her for a few moments before closing the door and pouring myself another drink. I wasn’t surprised that she knew about Karen, after all, it’s her job to know things, but for myself... I wasn’t actually sure what I was feeling? Anger? Annoyed? Upset? One thing for sure was that I still had issues with Karen, and Lucie had known that, despite pretending otherwise. I sat down with my drink, with the feeling it was going to be a very long evening!


End file.
